Escape Velocity
by AnotherSpoonyBard
Summary: In physics, escape velocity is the minimum speed needed for an object to break free from the gravitational attraction of another object. Or: in which Tōshirō and Rangiku clear some air with Isshin.


_Disclaimer_ : I don't own Bleach. It belongs to Tite Kubo and its various license-holders.

* * *

This, like everything else I've written in this fandom, belongs to the _Chaos_ _Theory_ AU _._ It is not canon-compliant. It is, however, in-character to the best of my ability.

* * *

 _Escape Velocity_

A Bleach Fanfic

One-Shot

* * *

When I compare  
What I have lost with what I have gained,  
What I have missed with what attained,  
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware  
How many days have been idly spent;  
How like an arrow the good intent  
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare  
To measure loss and gain in this wise?  
Defeat may be victory in disguise;  
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

 _Loss and Gain_ – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* * *

Rangiku didn't have a _lot_ of reasons to go visit the Sixth, on most days. She was friends with Renji, sure, but they usually saw each other after working hours. There was a certain… atmosphere about the place that discouraged casual drop-ins, and much as she might feign obliviousness to things like that, Rangiku was sensitive to it.

But as it happened, she was seeking a different member of the division, today; one she wanted to talk to without any of their mutual friends around.

Fortunately, Karin was an easy woman to find—she did tend to stand out a little. Particularly on the training field, where she was now, fending off three unseated shinigami with her sealed katana. Rangiku strolled up to the fence around the ring, inclining herself forward and bracing her hands against the top rail. She felt her hair fall forward over her shoulders, but unlike everyone seemed to think, she was in no danger of accidentally revealing more skin than intended.

Fixing her eyes on the practice bout, Rangiku let her mouth turn up at the corners. Even her fighting style resembled his. She doubted Karin knew it, of course, but that athletic way of bounding around the field, aggressive and precise—that was Isshin down to the determined expression she wore while doing it.

It was nostalgic, really.

One of the other shinigami tried to catch her from behind, but Karin whipped around, striking with her foot rather than her sword, lashing high to catch the taller man square across the jaw. He dropped with a grunt—Rangiku couldn't help laughing. It was really too funny to watch such a small person throw the bigger ones around. One of many reasons she derived such entertainment from watching her captain's rare practice matches.

They were about the same height, come to think of it…

Her laughter drew their attention to her; Rangiku picked one of her hands up from the railing and waved it casually, plastering a bright grin on her face. "Karin-chan!" she sing-songed. "Do you have a minute?"

Karin flicked her eyes from one incapacitated opponent to the other two and shrugged. "I guess." Sheathing her zanpakutō, she frowned at the one still on the ground. "Hey, you two: get Yutaka to the Fourth. I might have broken his jaw."

"How ruthless of you, Karin-chan." Rangiku arched a brow, crossing her arms.

Karin looked unfazed. "It's not the worst thing to happen to him this week. They challenged me, not the other way around, so I don't feel too bad about it."

Rangiku didn't even try to suppress her smile. "If you say so."

It had only been about a year since Karin, her sister Yuzu, and their Quincy friend Ishida had graduated from Shin'ō. Rangiku couldn't help but think of the three of them as a set, in some sense. They made it remarkably easy for her by rarely being seen apart outside of divisional duties—and that despite being in different divisions. Plenty of people went without seeing a member of another division for decades. It was less common, with the impending war and the sudden stress on unity, but even so, their closeness was remarkable.

When she'd first joined the Tenth, she hadn't spoken to Gin more than once a month, if that.

"Did you want something, Matsumoto? Cause if not, I have a stack of paperwork on my desk that needs looking at." Karin shoved her hands into the pockets of her shihakushō, which—wait.

"How did you get pockets? That measure was denied by the budgetary committee!"

Or so Nanao had said.

Karin gave her an unimpressed look, her lips thinning. "Uryū sewed them in for me."

Rangiku blinked. Actually, trying to imagine this scenario was… not that difficult. _Adorable_ , but not that difficult. "You think he'd do mine?"

"Uh… probably if you asked, I guess."

"Excellent!" She'd have to do that. Ishida was recently from the living world, right? Maybe he could make her some other cute things… but she was digressing now. Rangiku didn't expect that Karin's patience would last all that long; she knew she'd just about exhausted the allowable quota of irrelevancy for the day.

So she adjusted quickly. "Can you tell me where your father lives, Karin-chan?"

Karin's eyes—which had started to wander—snapped back to her instantaneously. Rangiku kept her expression light and coy, though ultimately it wouldn't make much difference. Karin was far too straightforward and blunt to be lured into any vague, playful exchanges of the kind Rangiku automatically sought. That was one way in which she and her father differed.

"Why? You finally gonna yell at him for leaving your division?"

Rangiku tilted her head to the side; her smile fell away until it was only a hint at the corners of her mouth. "Something like that, yes."

Karin shook her head. "I wanna know what I'm signing him up for, Matsumoto. He's my dad—if these people find him…"

That was pretty understandable, really. Isshin's current anonymity—in spite of his now-confirmed existence in Soul Society—might very well be what was keeping him from a trial before the Central 46 for desertion and dereliction of duty. He kept his head down; they in turn pretended not to see him.

"Walk with me for a little while, Karin-chan."

Karin, her hands still in her pockets, hopped the fence. "Yeah, okay. But I don't have a ton of time today, so maybe give me the short version."

The two of them turned away from the Sixth's training ring and towards the outer areas of the Seireitei. Rangiku guided them down less-populated streets to maintain the privacy of the conversation. She wasn't sure how much of this Isshin really wanted Karin to know, but she was feeling a bit more generous with her information than usual—perhaps _because_ Isshin might not like it much. She generally didn't think she was a petty person, but then… this wasn't a petty matter.

"You're eighteen now, right?" she asked, glancing down at the girl beside her.

Karin looked a fraction younger than what someone would in the living world; aging was such a strange thing in Soul Society. It privately amused her that even with his recent growth spurt, her captain still looked much the same.

"Yeah. A couple weeks ago."

"Congratulations." Rangiku counted off the years on her fingers. "I guess that makes it twenty-five years ago that he left, more or less." She swallowed around an unexpected lump in her throat—really, she'd dealt with this so much better than Tōshirō had; she should hardly be letting it catch up to her now.

Smiling to make it less obvious, she continued. "I think Shūhei already told you he was my captain at the time. Tōshirō was the third seat back then."

Karin considered this for a moment. "He probably did all the work, didn't he? Hitsugaya, I mean. Not my dad."

Rangiku laughed. "Well… maybe comparatively he did more than he should have—but only because our captain was such a slacker!"

Isshin's daughter rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. Just him. No other slackers in the _whole_ division." Her sarcasm was obvious.

So naturally, Rangiku pretended not to notice. "Exactly! But…" her tone sobered. "He had one good point, back then. He tended to care much more about helping other people—about doing the right thing—than he did about the rules. He was also very protective of his subordinates."

"Isn't that two good points?"

Rangiku slanted her eyes sideways to make contact with Karin's. "Not if you want to help your captain out with the important things."

Karin grunted; Rangiku thought that perhaps she needn't make her point any more clear than that.

"Anyway… one day, your dad heard a report of shinigami dying in the living world." Rangiku pushed a sigh out of her nose and stretched her arms upwards, lacing her fingers and inverting her hands to reach as high as she could. Following the motion upwards with her eyes, she squinted at the sunlight between her fingers.

"So of course he went to investigate. Against the rules and alone." She shook her head, closing her fingers over as if to grasp the sun blocked by her palm. Her hands fell, and her eyes with them. "When he got back, he wouldn't tell us everything about what had happened, only that there was some kind of strange Hollow out there, and that he'd fought it. The Sōtaichō let it go because no one was killed. He was supposed to leave it alone after that."

Karin snorted. "Yeah, right."

Rangiku's mouth curled. "You'd be surprised how often people with authority around here just assume they're going to be obeyed, no matter the track record or personality of the other person."

"No I wouldn't."

She huffed. "Okay, maybe not. But yeah—your dad wasn't back in the division for more than a little while before he took off again. Not even a goodbye, you know. And he didn't come back." Rangiku's smile faded away. "We didn't know what had happened to him. No one could find him. I went out into the living world myself to look, since I knew his reiatsu better than anyone."

Tōshirō had refused to go searching. Rangiku had understood, even then.

"We went without a captain for a while there, until Tōshirō-kun managed to get bankai. But you know… I don't think we ever quite made it out of Isshin's… I don't know the word. His gravity, maybe? He meant a lot to all of us—he was one of those captains who was really the heart of his division. Without knowing if he'd ever come back…" She shrugged.

"He lives in the Third District. I can write down the address for you."

Surprised, Rangiku looked back down at Karin. She was scowling, arms crossed; when she met her eyes, she shook her head.

"Sounds like he deserves whatever he's about to get. Just don't go spreading it around Soul Society, okay?"

"No need to worry, Karin-chan. I can keep a secret."

Oh, could she _ever_.

* * *

"Well, well, well. Here's a nostalgic face."

The voice triggered memories from years ago—more of them than he liked to admit. Isshin stiffened; how had he not sensed her approaching? Once, her presence had been as familiar as the back of his own hand. Had it really been so long as that?

Slowly, deliberately, he snapped off his examination gloves. His last patient for the day had left not two minutes before. Isshin carefully did not look out of the periphery of his vision. Instead, he threw the gloves out and washed his hands. He could hear her shihakushō rustle as she shifted; she was growing impatient.

He couldn't blame her. In truth, he was surprised she'd lasted this long without weaseling his location out of someone and showing up here. Rangiku had a distinctive tendency to always get what she wanted out of a person. When he'd used to rib her about it, she'd claimed it was only because she was cute. But it was so much more than that—she could read a person like other people read books.

Isshin needed to make sure he was prepared before he subjected himself to that.

When he finally turned around, he wore a too-large grin. "Rangiku-chan! It's been a long time!"

The look in her eyes suggested that she wasn't fooled. The subtlety of her smile confirmed it. He'd based his bombastic, over-the-top cover on her version of the same; he shouldn't be surprised that she saw right though it. He'd always been a terrible liar.

She crossed her arms under her chest, still studying him. He resisted the instinct to turn it into a joke about her breasts—while it was entirely typical of the people they'd been, he didn't have the right to casually flirt or joke with her anymore. He sighed.

"I got some new sake from the brewers in the First District. That nice fruity stuff. You still like plum, right?"

She nodded; truthfully, her silence unnerved him a little. It meant she was really serious about something—and there was only one thing it could be, in this situation. He led her from the clinic into the house itself. Her eyes wandered over everything: the display case with his daughters' offer letters, the bookshelves stuffed with medical texts—most of them from Ryūken, the living world touches he hadn't been able to give up. The kitchen was bachelor-clean; without Yuzu here to do the cooking or anything, he mostly lived out of containers she made him when she came to visit. Those were all in the fridge, leaving nothing to inhabit the countertops or island.

Isshin reached into the cabinet for the sake dishes, setting one in front of where Rangiku had planted herself on a stool at the island, and another on the opposite side. He'd drag one of the other stools over for himself. He slid the sake bottle across the table to her, and she caught it with the deft touch of long practice. He didn't remember things being quite that way before. He swallowed.

Neither of them spoke again until they were both situated. Even then, it took a while. She uncorked the sake, and for a while, the only sounds were the thuds of it hitting the island after a pour, or the lighter clink of a cup pinging on the stone of the counter. She'd leaned her elbow on it, holding her head in the same hand. Isshin hunched—he always felt slightly too large on the stools.

She stared him down for a long time—and he let her. It was awkward and uncomfortable; he had to resist the urge to shift. But his face was already easy enough for her to decipher. He didn't need to give her even more body language cues as well. About his third cup in, he gave up and leaned forward as well, bracing his forearms on the counter and dropping his gaze. He couldn't hold her eyes any longer.

That seemed to be her cue to speak.

"Tōshirō thought you were dead, you know." Her cup hit the counter hard enough that he flinched. "He couldn't believe that you were alive and hadn't come back. That you would ever choose anything over the division that loved you."

Isshin swallowed. "And you?"

She shook her head. "I admired you too much to believe there was anything out there that could kill you. So I had to accept pretty early on that you couldn't be found because you didn't want to be. That you _had_ chosen something over us."

He raised his head. Rangiku had closed her eyes; her shoulders slumped with an invisible weight. Isshin knew without a doubt that he'd left it there.

"Maybe I should thank you. After you… accepting that someone else would want to leave my life wasn't even hard. At least Gin had the decency to say goodbye first." Her eyes cracked open; she reached with her free hand for the sake bottle and poured another cup.

"She would have died if I hadn't," he said hollowly. "And she'd already saved my life once."

"So it was her from the beginning, huh? I can't say I'm surprised." Her tone was hard to read.

Isshin's brows furrowed. "How do you mean?"

Rangiku smiled with no mirth. "You're just pretty predictable, is all I meant."

He didn't know if she was telling the truth or not—Rangiku had always been adept at concealing things, when she wanted to be. He was certainly no expert in understanding people. Isshin barely understood himself most of the time. Apparently, she had no such problem.

"I don't think I'm even really mad at you for it," she continued. "But I am pretty pissed that even after you came back, you didn't let us know. And even after we _knew_ , you didn't come to see us. Not even once." She scowled across the counter at him, circling the rim of her sake cup with her index finger.

"You're a bastard, Isshin Shiba." She paused, then amended. "Though I guess it's Kurosaki now, huh? Was that her name, or did you make it up later?"

He nodded. "Masaki. Masaki Kurosaki." After all this time, the pain was a twinge, but it was still there. Right in the middle of him.

"Masaki." Rangiku tried the name out, pursing her lips. "Your kids are really something else. Karin-chan wouldn't give me your address without an explanation."

"How much did you tell her?"

Her eyes sharpened through the haze of the sake. "As much as I damn well pleased. I have that right." She took another swallow of the sake. "It's not like I know any of the important parts, anyway. My captain was a hero-type who wouldn't tell his vice-captain anything."

Isshin grimaced. "I didn't want you to—"

"Worry?" she finished for him. "Then maybe you should have written a note or something, because I did. I worried for more than twenty years. I worried when I watched your third seat, who thought you were damn near the sun in the sky, push himself so far in training that he collapsed. I worried when I watched him accept the haori for the Tenth. I worried when I saw him freeze his heart and lock it away somewhere I can't reach. I worried when I had to go tell your cousins that we had no idea where you were—they'd already lost one family member to service. They weren't too happy when I told them they'd lost another."

Her hand clenched—the fingernails dug little furrows into her cheek. The other one shook where she held the cup. "I worried when I had to lead a division all by myself, because the captain was gone and the third seat had disappeared to train for bankai. I worried when sometimes I forgot that you were gone and thought of a joke to tell you or a question to ask you about."

Rangiku pulled in a deep breath, then released it. "I'm probably a functioning alcoholic by this point, but since I'm functioning, I'd say I handled it pretty well, actually. I can't worry about you when I can't remember who you are, after all." She drained the rest of her cup for emphasis, slamming it down on the counter.

He deserved that. He deserved worse than that.

But damn if it didn't hurt more than he'd expected anyway.

"I was afraid," he admitted.

That got her attention; she tilted her head at him wordlessly.

"That's why I didn't let you know after I came back. I made sure my family knew it hadn't been your fault, but… I couldn't make myself go back. I expected you both to hate me." He hadn't been willing to face up to the possibility. "And then after the ryoka incident, it was complicated even further. I wasn't just a deserter—I was a traitor. I wanted to stay out of everything until the girls had made it out of Shin'ō."

Of course, that didn't explain the whole year between then and now. He knew Rangiku noticed, but she must have decided to let it slide.

"So what are you going to do about it?" she asked levelly.

Isshin sighed. "I don't want to just waltz back into the Tenth. That's still a bad idea." That was the worst possible place to do any of this—it was so loaded with memory and meaning. Even someone as oblivious as he was knew that. "If… if he'll agree to see me, I'd like to do that. On neutral ground though—maybe a restaurant or something. I think you both deserve the whole story."

"You're damn right we do." Rangiku's tone was dark, for her; she smiled though.

It faded as she stood, swaying slightly. "Just a warning, though, Isshin. He took the whole thing a lot worse than I did. I know you're used to being able to reach people with that attitude of yours. But you might not be able to melt the ice he's put up, you know what I mean?"

He nodded. "Yeah. But I've got to try, at least."

* * *

Tōshirō was more distracted than usual as he opened the door to the officers' training ring near the Tenth.

Rangiku was trying to persuade him to go meet with Shi—Kurosaki. It was still too strange to think of him as someone named Kurosaki. He was _supposed_ to be Shiba-taichō, but he wasn't.

He frowned. Tōshirō could not say if he wanted to meet with him or not. Really, it should have been an easy 'no.' There was absolutely no reason to go speak to someone who'd abandoned his entire division—all of his subordinates—to go… swanning off into the living world. In the end, that was what he'd done. He'd left. He'd left Rangiku to run a division long before she was ready, and Tōshirō to try and pick up the slack by training even harder for bankai.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice the other presence in the ring until after she'd noticed him.

"Oh, it's you."

Karin Kurosaki. Of course.

"What are you doing here?" It was the middle of the night—and she wasn't even a fukutaichō. There was no reason she should need the extra protections and resistance training.

He hadn't realized he was scowling at her until she was scowling at him as well.

"My shikai has a tendency to catch things on fire," she deadpanned. She was still holding it in her hand—the feather on the end glimmered. "Better to do that somewhere _not_ connected to the barracks."

He wasn't sure why, but he felt Hyōrinmaru stirring in his inner world.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Wanna spar?"

Tōshirō crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm a captain. You just made eighth seat. It wouldn't be a spar, it would be a beating." He hated that people always underestimated him because he was the youngest captain. He'd earned his haori the same as everyone else who wore one.

Clicking her tongue against her teeth, Karin shrugged. "Suit yourself then." She didn't sound too happy, but she sealed her zanpakutō and sheathed it. "How'd you know I made eighth seat anyway? I joined at eighteenth."

He looked away, fixing his eyes on one of the training dummies. "There isn't a captain in the Seireitei who isn't tracking your progress. Or your sister's, or that ryoka friend of yours." Neglecting to do so himself would be remiss. And, if only to himself, he was willing to admit they'd all done quite well for themselves: the other twin was Unohana's ninth seat still, but everyone knew that was a special position in the Fourth, and Kyōraku had promoted the Quincy to tenth seat when it opened up.

Even now, he was getting a better sense for her reiatsu. His eighth seat comment wasn't quite the whole truth, but the implication was still fair. She was probably near the level of a third or fourth seat.

Karin, however, wrinkled her nose. "It's because we're his kids, isn't it?"

Tōshirō turned his head to make eye contact. She looked a _lot_ like him. About as much as a teenage girl could look like her father, he supposed. Her eyes were the wrong color, but the similarity was in their features: proud nose, angled jaw, chin. He hated how familiar her face was, at the same time as it was utterly different. Just enough to remind him.

"Did he ever talk about the Tenth, to you?"

She shrugged; her movements were deceptively loose, he thought.

"No. He never talked about any of it. I knew he was a shinigami when I learned enough to recognize a zanpakutō, but I probably wouldn't have if we'd never come here." Karin shifted, resting her left wrist on the tsuka of her zanpakutō. She wore it in the iaijustu style, suspended from a red sash of some kind.

That fact was the same annoying blend of old and new that irked him about the rest of her.

"We wouldn't have, if mom and Ichigo hadn't died." Karin maintained a nonchalant tone. "I don't know the whole story either, you know—he might not have ever told you guys about us, but he also never told us about you."

He'd have thought the captain would have at least informed his blood family of who he'd been. Apparently, he hadn't. Tōshirō clenched his teeth for a second before he forced them to relax. "It's not just because you're his children," he said, answering her earlier question. "It's because you are, by any conventional measure, extremely talented."

She snorted. "You hate the word genius too, don't you?"

Tōshirō, surprised by her insight, responded automatically. "Yes."

He thought he saw the corner of her mouth twitch. "Hey, Hitsugaya."

"That's Hitsugaya-taichō," he corrected. It was force of habit.

Karin rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Hitsugaya- _taichō_ , then. Some day, when you don't hate me anymore, tell me what he was like as a captain, okay? And I'll try to fill in what he was like otherwise. There's huge parts of his life that I don't know, and it's weird to ask him, so…"

Tōshirō lost his scowl for all of a second before he forced it back onto his face. "We'll see."

She looked unimpressed by that. "Pretty sure I know what that means." Shaking her head, she finally decided to make for the exit.

On her way past him, she stopped. "But if it still bugs you this much, what he did—I say go let him have it."

She was gone before he could formulate a reply to that.

* * *

Considering that she had let fly with _most_ of her tirade the last time they'd met up, Rangiku anticipated the need to play mediator to this discussion. Fortunately, it was now a role she felt herself more suited to, with what she needed to say out of the way. Forgiveness was a ways off yet, but she believed it would happen, and it left her feeling _just_ generous enough towards Isshin that she'd intercede if things got too frosty between the other two.

Which was a very literal possibility, considering Tōshirō's tendency to emit ice when his emotions got away from him.

She'd been half-expecting to have to tell Isshin that Tōshirō wasn't interested in talking to him, but something must have happened to change the captain's mind. Which was how they'd wound up at Sasagin, Rangiku wearing a sunny smile to compensate for Tōshirō's permanent frown. He didn't like places like this, but she was pretty sure it was better here than at Isshin's house. Or worse, inside the Seireitei.

When their former captain arrived, he did so in street clothes, Engetsu nowhere in sight. That was probably better, too—at least he'd thought that far ahead.

He sat down opposite the two of them. His demeanor might have looked at-ease to anyone else, but Rangiku could see the little signs of nervousness. Isshin always gave himself away by his eyes. And right now, he wasn't looking at either of them. Even when he settled, he fixed his gaze slightly too far to her right. It _looked_ mostly like eye contact, but it wasn't.

The waitress came by before they could get any further, and took their food and drink orders down. The skeptical look she gave Tōshirō would have made Rangiku laugh on any other occasion, but this wasn't really the time.

Tōshirō sat ramrod-straight; Rangiku leaned back against the wall behind her. Isshin, on the other side, had no such option—he held himself uncomfortably, broad shoulders folded slightly forward into a hunch.

"It's… good to see you again, Hitsugaya-taichō." Isshin used Tōshirō's title rather than his name.

How far, she thought, from the way things had once been.

Her current captain nodded tersely. "Matsumoto-fukutaichō informs me that you have a story to tell. Tell it."

Isshin glanced at her; all she could really do was shrug. She _had_ warned him.

He looked torn for a moment, and then his features settled into a grim sort of determination. It was an expression more at home on the battlefield than a casual setting like this, but then… maybe that was appropriate, in a way.

"The first time I went to the living world, back then, several things happened that I never told you about. The first was that another shinigami attacked me. I didn't know who at the time, but now I think I might."

Tōshirō's eyes narrowed. "Aizen."

Isshin nodded. "Most likely. I don't know how all of it quite fits together, yet, but that's not really the point. The second thing was that, when I was there, a woman saved my life. Her name was Masaki Kurosaki." There was a long pause.

Rangiku didn't understand the reason he hesitated until he finished.

"She was… a Quincy."

She pulled in a sharp breath. "Does that mean…?"

Her former captain sighed heavily. "Yes. My daughters carry Quincy blood. They inherited my power rather than hers, but… still."

Tōshirō digested this information more slowly, crossing his arms and looking down at his knees. Shaking himself slightly, he flicked his eyes back up. "We'll get to that. You say this Quincy saved your life?"

"Yeah. I'd been attacked by some shinigami I couldn't sense, and the wound was deep enough that I couldn't use my bankai. This girl steps in, but she's not quite fast enough to hit it with her arrows. So she leaves herself wide open. The Hollow goes in to bite her, and hits—but she aims an arrow right for its head and kills it." Isshin lowered his gaze to the table in front of them.

"It seems like the problem's over. She heals me, and seems fine herself. I head back to Soul Society, give my report, all that." He swallowed. "But it all keeps bothering me. How strange that Hollow was—its hole was closed over. How some shinigami had attacked me during the fight. And I started to wonder if it was really okay for me to leave things like that."

It was his best and worst trait at the same time, really. Rangiku had always thought so, at least.

"So I went back—just to check on things. I ran into her again almost right away, only…" Isshin grimaced. "She'd started to hollowify—been infected by Hollow reiatsu. To pureblood Quincy like Masaki… that's a death sentence. Her friend was trying to help her, get her to someone who could use some Quincy procedure to get rid of it, but I think by then it was too late."

He lifted his head. "We were approached by Kisuke Urahara. He used to be a captain here, more than a hundred years ago now, before he was exiled. He knows a lot about Hollowification, and he had a way to save Masaki's life." Reaching up, Isshin ran a hand over his beard. "Normally, when Quincy absorb Hollow reiatsu, their soul is utterly destroyed. But he could halt the process if he had something to bring her soul back into balance. The opposite of a Hollowfied Quincy."

Tōshirō's brow furrowed. "A… shinigami partially turned into a human?"

"Basically, yeah. He had this gigai, one that would transition me partway to a human. Suspend me halfway between life and death, I think he said. Anyway, if I entered the gigai and gave up my powers, he could link my soul to Masaki's and stabilize us both halfway between one and the other."

"And you _agreed_ to this?" Tōshirō stopped looking angry long enough to look incredulous.

"Of course he did," Rangiku interjected. "She'd saved his life, and he had a debt to pay, right Isshin?" She took no joy from the knowledge, but he really _was_ predictable.

He nodded. "I knew I wouldn't be able to go back—I broke so many laws I lost count. But I had to do it. What kind of person would I have been if I'd let her die because of that?"

Rangiku could hear Tōshirō grinding his teeth. She knew what he was thinking, too, but she didn't say the words for him. They had to come from _him_ , or they wouldn't make any difference.

"Did you even _hesitate_?" his tone cracked like an ice floe in a river. "Did you even think about the division you'd be leaving behind? Did you ever consider that maybe we still _needed_ you? That I—" he cut himself off.

Rangiku put a hand on his shoulder; for once, he allowed it.

"I… didn't have a lot of time to make the decision," Isshin admitted. "But I did think of you. Both of you. I knew… I knew that even without me, you would be all right. Better than all right, even. But Masaki—without me, she was going to die. Be destroyed completely."

A lot hung in the air there. Rangiku didn't miss the equivalence Isshin implied between people who had been like his family for years and a girl he'd met once. It was hard to swallow, even for her. But… at the same time, she could understand what he'd done. Saving Masaki's life had been the right thing, most likely. Admirable, in a way.

That didn't make it hurt any less.

"Did it even feel like a sacrifice to you?" Tōshirō asked, voice colder than Rangiku thought she'd ever heard it. "Or was your replacement family _that_ much better?"

Rangiku flinched. Isshin looked like Tōshirō had just stabbed him. But… that was really the crux of the whole thing, wasn't it? They'd been more than a division. They'd been a _family_. A dysfunctional, ridiculous, patchwork family, but a family all the same. And for Isshin to reappear, not only without telling anyone, but with a blood family in tow… that was hard to accept.

The waitress approached with their food; Rangiku caught her eyes and waved her back apologetically. This probably shouldn't be interrupted, even for food and sake.

Isshin tried to speak, but choked. His glass of water was completely frozen, so Rangiku pushed him hers, which had been further away from Tōshirō. He quaffed from it, not setting it down again until half of it was gone.

"Of course it was a sacrifice," he said, the words uncomfortably raw.

Rangiku felt a familiar pain in her chest—the slow throb of heartache. So much heartache.

It was everywhere these days.

"Not a day went by that I didn't—that I didn't think of the two of you. I was so afraid you'd hate me. I hoped… I hoped you'd think I was dead, so you could move past it." Isshin's hands clenched on his knees.

"I loved my wife, and my son—I still do. I love my daughters more than anything in the world. But even then… there were some days when I'd think about the Tenth and wish… that there had been any other way to save Masaki. Any other way at all, so that I could have come back." He smiled ruefully, shaking his head.

"I did hate you." Tōshirō spoke flatly. "Whether you were dead or not, I hated you for leaving. I trusted you completely, and you failed me."

Each word seemed to shrink Isshin further into himself.

"And when I learned that you didn't even tell your family about us… that looks a lot like validation to me. You didn't even care enough to tell the people you love about us. I hated that we meant _that_ little to you." He paused—he was considering his next words carefully, from the look on his face.

"But more than anything, I hated myself, for not being able to let it go. I'm captain of the Tenth. I did that, by myself, because you failed all of us, and I swore that I would never do the same. That's _my_ accomplishment. Rangiku ran the division for five years after you left. While you were getting married and having a nice life, we repaired all the damage you'd done—to us and the rest of the division." He _tsk_ ed. "But in all that time, none of us ever really let you go. You were still _there_ , and I couldn't get rid of you, no matter how hard I tried."

Neither of them could look at the other. Isshin was close to tears. Tōshirō… she wasn't sure if he was the same, or closer to freezing their former captain into an ice sculpture.

"I'm sorry," Isshin said, the words cracked and laden with sorrow. Dry earth, flooded too fast by the rain. "I'm sorry I left the two of you behind. Sorry I left the division behind. I'm sorry for what you had to go through because of me, and I'm sorry I haven't apologized before now. You've both…" Isshin swallowed thickly. "You've both become really great officers since I left, and you're right. You did it by yourselves. I had nothing to do with it."

He pulled in a heavy breath. "I'm both proud and ashamed of that."

The silence lingered for a long time after that; all three of them kept company with their own thoughts.

At length, Rangiku asked a question that had been nagging at her. "Do you plan to come back? With the war and everything… I really doubt anyone will be interested in putting you on trial." She suspected the Sōtaichō would just be glad for another captain-level shinigami on his side.

"Maybe someday," Isshin replied. "But… if I do, it won't be to the Tenth. That's your division now, both of you."

The waitress came back again, and this time, Rangiku didn't stop her. The meal itself passed largely in silence, but it wasn't as uncomfortable as she'd expected. Afterwards, Isshin asked them if they'd like to stay for drinks.

Tōshirō, of course, declined; Rangiku thought it best if she stuck with him on that.

Their goodbyes were perfunctory, at least on his part, but at least he wasn't scowling anymore.

That was something, when it came to him.

* * *

 _Notes_ : As is becoming a theme with these shortfics, this is the beginning of some development that needs more time. Everything but the Rain (the canon chapters this is drawn from) was _really_ nonspecific about what happened to Tōshirō and Rangiku after Isshin left, but I can't imagine it was easy. So... consequences of decisions. As Rangiku points out here, I think both of them acknowledge that Isshin did the right thing, but that doesn't make all the pain they went through go away. So if Tōshirō seemed harsh here... remember that he lost kind of a paternal-figure (or at least a very respected senior officer he admired and trusted a lot) with no explanation, and had to grow up really fast to keep his division together.

That's how I think of it, anyway.

Anyway, we also got a touch of my revisionary worldbuilding in this re: Quincy and Hollows and crap. I've worked out a way that all four types of being interact with each other that has the benefit of being symmetrical, consistent, and _mostly_ canon. My creation myth, however, is complete extrapolation. Anyway, parts of that business will become relevant in the next fic, which is a bit more adventure-y than these last few have been. I'm using some of the stuff from the Hell Verse movie, though since it's not official canon I feel perfectly fine changing more of it than I usually would want to.

It's called _The Uncertainty Principle_ , and if anyone was thinking there was a sad lack of Urahara recently... I've got your back. :)


End file.
